Fortify Your Grid with EDB Postgres® AI: High Availability and Reliability for Mission-Critical Utilities
Utilities today face the twin challenges of modernizing the grid and managing a decentralized energy landscape. Plus, a growing population and more severe weather events caused by climate change are placing further burdens on electrical grids. As utilities navigate these pressures, the reliability of your foundational data systems is non-negotiable.
Learn how EDB and Metasphere are helping public utilities keep municipal water supplies safe and sustainable
Whether your organization is a Commercial Utility or a Public Sector Utility , our platform addresses the universal challenges of reliability and cost savings.
More data, more options, more stress
Big data management
Smart meters and telemetry units provide granular, near real-time data on consumption, voltage, and power quality at thousands of points. Utilities must build sophisticated data management systems and use advanced analytics and AI to process this "Big Data" effectively for real-time decision-making, load forecasting, and grid optimization.
Interoperability
Integrating new smart grid technologies, sensors, and meters from different manufacturers requires overcoming challenges with interoperability and ensuring all components can communicate seamlessly using standardized protocols.
Bidirectional power flow and voltage fluctuation
The traditional grid was designed for electricity to flow one way, from power plant to consumer. Solar panels inject power back into the distribution network, creating bidirectional power flow. This can cause voltage stability issues and fluctuations, especially in local distribution lines not built to handle it.
Intermittency and variability
Solar energy is intermittent and variable. This fluctuating generation must be constantly balanced by other power sources, requiring a much faster and more flexible response from grid operators to prevent grid imbalances and potential outages.
EDB Postgres AI: Your solution for a modern utility database
EDB (EnterpriseDB) helps power a modern utilities database by extending the robust, flexible PostgreSQL open-source database with enterprise-grade features necessary for mission-critical operations, massive data volumes, and integration within complex grid architectures.
Handling massive real-time & time-series data
Modern grids generate an explosion of time-series data (voltage readings, consumption logs, production levels) from smart meters, sensors, and Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs).
- Scalable data ingestion: EDB Postgres can handle the massive, continuous stream of data from millions of smart meters and sensors at the edge of the grid.
- Time-series optimization: Modern PostgreSQL extensions (like TimescaleDB) are often integrated with EDB to efficiently store, compress, and rapidly query time-stamped data. This is crucial for:
- Real-time monitoring: Allowing operators to see what is happening across the entire network now.
- Predictive maintenance: Analyzing historical time-series data to predict when a transformer or power line might fail before it causes an outage.
Accelerating grid modernization and resilience
Grid modernization is the primary strategic priority for both public and private utilities. Modernization initiatives are about enhancing the grid's ability to withstand and quickly recover from major disruptions caused by climate change -induced weather events or intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar.
- A foundational data layer: EDB's platform is the foundational data layer that enables these modernization projects, from smart meter data analysis to DER (Distributed Energy Resources) coordination.
- Solving the DER challenge: Managing the coordination of millions of decentralized power sources, such as solar panels and microgrids, is a primary challenge. Utilities are using Postgres to maximize the efficiency of these resources.
Scalability, high availability, and cost efficiency
Big Data requires a database that can grow without breaking the bank or going down.
- Scalability (clustering and sharding): EDB offers advanced tools for managing large-scale deployments, including logical replication and potentially distributed database solutions. This allows utilities to scale out their infrastructure horizontally to manage ever-increasing data volumes without compromising performance.
- Enterprise reliability: For mission-critical grid operations (like ADMS or DERMS), EDB provides enterprise-grade high availability and automated failover capabilities, ensuring the grid's operational data is accessible 24/7.
- Lower total cost of ownership (TCO): By being based on open-source PostgreSQL, EDB's solution typically has a significantly lower licensing cost than proprietary database alternatives, freeing up capital for utilities to invest in other core grid modernization projects
Escaping vendor lock-In
There is a massive strategic push to migrate away from proprietary to escape "expensive, long-term contracts" and vendor lock-in.
- Cost savings: EDB offers a direct path to reducing these multi-million dollar licensing fees, freeing up budget that can be reinvested into critical grid initiatives.
The power of five nines: meeting compliance, beating competitors
In the utilities industry, system uptime isn't just a best practice—it's a financial and public safety imperative. EDB Postgres® AI High Availability (HA) enables you to power your business 24/7 with up to 99.999% high availability.Additionally, you can perform maintenance and rollout updates to your application without worrying about outages. Flexibly deploy the level of HA best suited for your application needs. Other benefits include:
- Avoid crippling compliance fines: Non-adherence to the strict reliability and security regulations set by governing bodies like NERC and FERC can result in severe financial penalties, with daily fines reaching up to $1.5 to $2 million. EDB’s "Five Nines" (99.999%) high availability is a direct solution to this major financial risk.
- Superior to hyperscalers: Our commitment to five nines is our single most important competitive differentiator against major cloud providers (hyperscalers). We deliver a critical requirement that they struggle to meet for your most demanding workloads.
